Japan's beloved literary masterpiece brought to life in manga form! Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle-class Japanese society in early 20th century Tokyo. Written with biting wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a rather cynical stray kitten. He finds his way into the home of an English teacher, where his running commentary on the follies and foibles of the people around him has been making readers laugh for more than a century. This is the very first manga edition in English of this classic piece of Japanese literature. The story lends itself well to a graphic novel format, allowing readers to pick up on the more subtle cues of the expressive cat, while also being immersed in the world of his perceptive narration. It is true to classic manga form, and is read back to front. Beautifully illustrated by Japanese artist Chiroru Kobato, this edition provides a visual, entertaining look at a unique period in Japan's history--filled with cultural and societal changes, rapid modernization and a feeling of limitless possibility--through the eyes of an unlikely narrator.

"A nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by a fellow who doesn't have a name, and has never caught a mouse, and isn't much good for anything except watching human beings in action…" --The New Yorker Written over the course of 1904-1906, Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.

Jiro Taniguchi ("The Walking Man", "The Caucasian Elm") marries talent to a solid script by Natsuo Sekikawa to present us with "The Times of Botchan", a fresco of Japanese society towards the end of the Meiji period, when the country was beginning to open up to the West. What in hands of another author could have simply been an illustrated textbook becomes a narrative for adults of great artistic and historic significance. The writer Sōseki Natsume, who suffers from neurosis as a consequence of cultural shock, conceives of what will be his new book, "Botchan", as a response to the challenges of his time. Other famous characters of that time appear along with him in a portrayal of the political, social and cultural life of what was arguably the most important period in the history of Japan.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes "an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and an aging simpleton. Now with a new introduction by the author. Here we meet 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey. “As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.... Reading Murakami ... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion.” —The Chicago Tribune

For some people, the daily grind of city life is exhausting. Yet somewhere between the busy streets there's a mysterious cat café that can only be found by weary souls. What's on the menu? A delicious drink, specially brewed for each customer...by a cat barista!

A delightfully creepy telling of Japanese ghost stories. Japanese folklore is abundant with tales of ghostly creatures and the supernatural. In Haunted Japan, author Catrien Ross reveals the legends that have been passed down for generations and continue to terrify us today. To research this book on the country's ghosts, demons and paranormal phenomena, Ross collected accounts from across Japan including: Sacred Mount Osore, a Japanese gateway to the land of the dead, where people gather to contact those who have passed on The Tokyo grave of the samurai Taira no Masakado, where passersby regularly witnessed his ghost until prayers finally laid him to rest The mummified remains of the monk Tetsumonkai at the Churenji Temple on Mount Yudono--a place where bizarre happenings are common The ruins of Hachioji Castle in Tokyo, which was abandoned for many years because of its many hauntings The result is an unparalleled insight into the dark corners of the Japanese psyche--a world filled with horrifying creatures including Oni (demons with fierce and ghastly appearances), Yurei (Japanese ghosts who inhabit the world of the living), and Yokai (supernatural monsters). The book also includes several traditional Japanese legends, concluding with two of the most famous ghost stories--that of the wronged wife Oiwa and the tale of the Peony Lantern. This book is richly illustrated with 32 pages of full-color prints of frightening ghosts and legendary creatures from Japan's shadowy past. Haunted Japan is the ideal book for anyone interested in exploring the darker side of Japanese history.

A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick 'Ingenious ... touching, surprising and sometimes heartbreaking.' Guardian 'If you're itching to read a new novel by David Mitchell ... try this.' The Times _______________ In Tokyo - one of the world's largest megacities - a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways. But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers - from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo's denizens, drawing them ever closer. 'Masterfully weaves together seemingly disparate threads to conjure up a vivid tapestry of Tokyo; its glory, its shame, its characters, and a calico cat.' David Peace, author of THE TOKYO TRILOGY One of the Independent's best debuts

The Rise and Fall of Modern Japanese Literature tells the story of Japanese literature from its start in the 1870s against the backdrop of a rapidly coalescing modern nation to the present. John Whittier Treat takes up both canonical and forgotten works, the non-literary as well as the literary, and pays special attention to the Japanese state’s hand in shaping literature throughout the country’s nineteenth-century industrialization, a half-century of empire and war, its post-1945 reconstruction, and the challenges of the twenty-first century to modern nationhood. Beginning with journalistic accounts of female criminals in the aftermath of the Meiji civil war, Treat moves on to explore how woman novelist Higuchi Ichiyō’s stories engaged with modern liberal economics, sex work, and marriage; credits Natsume Sōseki’s satire I Am a Cat with the triumph of print over orality in the early twentieth century; and links narcissism in the visual arts with that of the Japanese I-novel on the eve of the country’s turn to militarism in the 1930s. From imperialism to Americanization and the new media of television and manga, from boogie-woogie music to Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki, Treat traces the stories Japanese audiences expected literature to tell and those they did not. The book concludes with a classic of Japanese science fiction a description of present-day crises writers face in a Japan hobbled by a changing economy and unprecedented natural and manmade catastrophes. The Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature reinterprets the “end of literature”—a phrase heard often in Japan—as a clarion call to understand how literary culture worldwide now teeters on a historic precipice, one at which Japan’s writers may have arrived just a moment before the rest of us.

AN INDIE NEXT PICK! From the #1 bestselling author in Japan comes a celebration of books, cats, and the people who love them, infused with the heartwarming spirit of The Guest Cat and The Travelling Cat Chronicles. Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for—or rather, demands—the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and the cat and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners. Their mission sends this odd couple on an amazing journey, where they enter different mazes to set books free. Through their travels, the cat and Rintaro meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, an unwitting book torturer who cuts the pages of books into snippets to help people speed read, and a publishing drone who only wants to create bestsellers. Their adventures culminate in one final, unforgettable challenge—the last maze that awaits leads Rintaro down a realm only the bravest dare enter . . . An enthralling tale of books, first love, fantasy, and an unusual friendship with a talking cat, The Cat Who Saved Books is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper. Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai. "Cats, books, young love, and adventure: catnip for a variety of readers!" –Kirkus